


No Light

by peacefrog



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Coda, Episode: s10e16 Paint It Black, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-26
Updated: 2015-03-26
Packaged: 2018-03-19 18:46:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3620379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peacefrog/pseuds/peacefrog
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>What if I said I didn’t wanna die?</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Light

The drive from Worcester to Lebanon seems to go on forever. Dean leans his head against the window as Sam speeds down the endless expanse of highways and back country roads, his own words echoing in his head as the miles stretch on for hours.

_What if I said I didn’t wanna die?_

Dean can’t remember the last time he felt this tired. Maybe after Hell, but this is something far worse. Exhaustion bites him to the bone until his limbs are like dead weight being dragged around by a body that feels more like a corpse these days.

His tank is running on empty, leaving nothing in it’s wake but rage and borrowed time. 

He remembers the apocalypse well, how it took every ounce of strength he had to get out of bed every morning, to resist the urge to say yes and end it all. He longs for those days now. Back then it was simple. 

He just had to keep on moving, keep pressing forward, hoping that maybe there would be a light somewhere far at the end of the tunnel. Now, he’s certain there’s no light, and the tunnel is really more like a black hole, and the black hole is slowly consuming him.

When he sold his soul for his brother, going to Hell felt like a coda. Like an end he could hold onto. He knows now that a light created by hellfire is better than no light at all. He knows that he is damned, doomed to walk the Earth for all eternity in solitude, a thing that used to be a man.

He’s uncertain now if he was ever truly human. Soldier, maybe. Guard dog, absolutely. Vessel. Poison. Loaded gun. This is how he will be remembered.

These days, he dreams in shades of crimson, shimmering like gold. Blood dripping down his wrists. He wakes up rock hard and itching to snap bones like twigs. He jerks off trying to think of pleasant things, things he would have thought about at twenty-five, but just before he comes he bites down on his lip hard enough to draw blood as visions of sinking his blade into flesh flash behind his eyes.

Dean never came back from being stabbed through the heart, that much he knows for sure. He confessed to fearing death, but he knows that he walked through death’s door long ago. The blood flows beneath his skin, his heart beats, his synapses fire, he fights and fucks and eats too much but he is not alive. 

He wonders if he was ever alive to begin with. Maybe when he was very young, the scent of his mother’s hair clinging heavy on his skin. He suspects he left himself back in 1983, burning away beside her on that ceiling.

By the time he walks through the door of his bedroom, hundreds of miles between him and that confessional, he barely has the strength to kick off his boots. He collapses onto his mattress, falls asleep with his clothes still on, waking hours later with his mouth feeling like steel wool and his jeans digging painfully into his hip. 

His body sings with the awful exhaustion that stems from far too much rest all at once, the perfect bit of irony to sit alongside his desire for life when he is already one with death. 

He doesn’t pull himself out of bed then, doesn’t quench his thirst, doesn’t remove his jeans that twist around his ankles and cut into his skin. Instead, he begins to pray, silently, for nothing in particular, for everything all at once. Just a mess of thoughts at first, a longing that coils down his spine.

When he finally finds the words, when his thoughts begin to focus, his prayers turn to something tantamount to begging. Nothing more than pathetic desperation.

_Cas, where the hell are you man?_

_It was you I should have been confessing to._

_It was you. I almost had the strength to say it…_

_I don’t think I can say it out loud, Cas. Can you hear me?_

_I’m so fucking scared. I need you. I need you._

His phone buzzes in his pocket. He fishes it out just before the call gets sent to voicemail.

“Hey,” is all he manages to croak out, pressing the receiver to his ear.

“Dean.” Cas’ voice is like a balm to the ache consuming every part of him. “I felt you praying but there was so much static. I couldn’t make out the words. I’m sorry.”

Dean wonders briefly if Cas’ fading grace is to blame, or if perhaps his soul is twisting back to a frequency no longer compatible with angel radio. 

“It’s okay, Cas.” Dean props himself up against the headboard. “Just had a rough couple of days.”

“Where are you?”

“Home.” Dean closes his eyes, tries to picture Cas speeding down the highway in that boat he calls a car.

“I’m just outside of St. Louis. I can be there tonight, just—”

“No, Cas,” Dean interrupts, his habitual desire to protest getting the best of him. “You got more important things to think about right now.”

“That’s not true,” Cas’ words so sincere Dean feels his heart twist inside his chest. “I’m on my way.”

“Cas—”

“Dean,” Cas cuts him off before he can even begin. “Your words may have come through as nothing more than noise, but your pain was loud and clear.”

Dean considers cutting in again, telling him he’ll be fine, that he’s got this, that he’s good, but he’s far too tired to fight anymore. He wonders if the pain was all that managed to get through. Wonders if his raw, desperate desire found its way in among the static as well.

“You don’t have to tell me why you prayed,” Cas continues. “But I am on my way.”

“Okay,” Dean chokes out, some emotion he has no name for threatening to pull him under.

They end the call after that, leaving Dean to spend the rest of the day in a fog, somewhere between the living and whatever it is he has become. 

He manages to get upright along the way, drifting around in the kitchen drinking bitter black coffee when Cas walks in just past midnight. 

Dean wants to say so much when their eyes lock as Cas steps over the threshold, but he’s afraid if he opens his mouth he might just scream instead. He doesn’t say a word, just closes the distance between them and wraps Cas up in his arms.

He longs for life here on the brink, tries to picture what it would be like to feel this way forever. What it would be like to hold Cas in his arms everyday, with no fear of letting go, knowing it will always be this way. To embrace him out of joy instead of clinging to him in sorrow. 

In the distance there is a flicker, a light so minuscule he’s certain he is imagining it. Cas’ presence fills him to the brim, his prayers answered in the midst of so much hopelessness and despair. For now, he knows, that alone has to be something like a miracle.


End file.
